


You are the canvas of my mind

by GinAndMilk



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Character Study, Drama & Romance, Emotions, M/M, Oneshot, POV First Person, exploration of feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-29
Updated: 2017-05-03
Packaged: 2018-10-12 16:37:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10495092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GinAndMilk/pseuds/GinAndMilk
Summary: She tells me about the house in the woods and about the man who lives there with his wolf dog. I feel strangely thrilled, like in a book when a new, mysterious character appears whom the reader doesn't get know anything about but so desperately wants to.I don't want to turn the page, I want to fill it myself.





	1. Chapter 1

I arrive at Moles Town on a chilly autumns day, thick fog hangs in the sky, making the dark green crowns of the trees disappear.

The town is small, only one narrow road winding past grey cottages, an ancient church, a store and a post office. Everything you need. Only a handful of people live here, farms are scattered around the town, people know each other. There rarely are new people moving into town, all eyes are on me when I enter the pub for the first time but my landlady, an eldery woman with a Collie looking almost as old as herself always trailing behind her, is there as well and quickly introcudes me to the locals.

I settle in, life is quiet and it is exaxtly what I came here for. The rush of the big city and all the pain and tears I left there lies behind me, I don't spend my time in a hospital reeking of disenfectant and death anymore but in the small practice on the ground floor of my cottage or outside to see my patients at their houses, The northern landscape is as rough as their people and some of them still don't trust the new doctor in town but it doesn't matter that much to me. I enjoy the time I spend on the road, I scan the landscape around me and marvel at it. Sometimes I see a white dog, almost wolf like, darting across the vast green marshes standing out against the endless dark greens and browns the land has to offer and I wonder. When I ask my landlady about it she puts down her teacup and lowers her voice. She tells me about the house in the woods and about the man who lives there with his wolf dog, he rarely visits the town and people whisper about him but, she adds, it is nothing but gossip. I feel strangely thrilled, like in a book when a new, mysterious character appears whom the reader doesn't get know anything about but so desperately wants to. Now that I know about the existence of the house curiosity flares up everytime I drive past the road that leads to it, winding into the trees like a forbidden trail. I ponder about its owner as well, what kind of man might be seeking such solitude I ask myself and when I see the white wolf dog again I squint but the figure is too far away to make out anything. The thoughts occupy my evenings spent alone, my imagination giving way to bright pictures and storylines and I let my myself be carried away. It becomes my little mindgame, something that belongs exclusiely to me, that I will never share. It gives my mind freedom and I go deeper down the rabbithole that has opened in my head.

Then, one evening, I hit the bottom. It is raining like the sky opened all its floodgates, darkness has already settled over the landscape and it my car decides to break down halfway between farmer I had been visiting and Moles Town. I stay inside it for a little while, hoping that perhaps a car would drive by but I know from experience that the streets are empty around this time. The rain drums on the roof while my hope dies down like the battery of my phone had quite a while ago. I look around once more, the road is familiar, I know where I am and that there is only one place I could go to ask at least for a phone.

I open the door and the rain hits me immediatly, cold and relentless drops crashing into my cheeks and forehead and I cross my arms over my chest protectively. It isn't far but the second I turn onto the unfamiliar road I feel like my car is thousands of miles away. My heartbeat seems to become louder and louder with every step I take, the trees seem to moan in the wind and the unfamiliar sounds of the forest surround me like an aura. The rain has long ago seeped through my jacket when I see light seeping faintly through the night. The road ends and before me lies a clearing, forming almost a perfect cirle around a weathered, wooden house. At the far end of the clearing the land descends towards a lake, I have seen it on a map in the post office before and I wanted to come here to see it but never done it. A Range Rover is parked beofre the house and the lights on the ground floor are on. Nervousness pulsates through me.

The stairs creak when I climb them and even before I knock I can hear a dog barking inside. The door opens and I hold my breath.

It was in that moment that my imagination collides with reality. Before me stands a man about my age with piercing grey eyesm the white wolf dog at his heels and I barely manage to stutter out the reason for my visit. He musters me before stepping aside to let me in. There is no hallway and I can't keep myself from looking around in the sparsely decorated room, I notice an open laptop on the coffee table with a mug next to it as if it had been abandod mid-task. My wet clothes drip all over the floor and form small puddles, he comes back with a phone and a towel and I stumble over my words. We wait for the taxi in silence but discomfort fails to settle.

That night I don't ponder about the house any longer when I curl up in bed after a hot shower, I ponder about the reason why. My car is at the services but I get a hire car from my insurance and make a decision. When I pull up in front of the house it is silent around me, my knock on the door stays unanswered and suddenly sadness overcomes me. I cross my arms over my chest again and take a deep breath, turning on my heel to walk back to my car. When I am about to open the door I hear a dog barking and when I look up he appears behind the trees. I wait until the white beast is sniffing my hand and I stare at its owner, clad in a weathered Barbour and hair tousled from the wind. Until then I could never imagine what beauty must look like.

In that moment I didn't realise what this would be the beginning of. We spend an afternoon together, having steaming tea on the porch, the lake stretching before us in its calmness. He doesn't talk much and I stumble over my words again, thanking him too often for the help and burning my tongue. When it gets colder we move inside, he still doesn't talk much but I don't feel like he wants me to leave and I don't want to either.

It is the middle of the night when we kiss and lose ourselves in the heat of our bodies.

The next morning dawns bright and clear, beeswax, wood and dog hair is the first thing I smell before I give way to the world by opening my eyes. I am in a stangers bed with a stranger in my arms but I have never felt like belonging anywhere like right here.

The mystery he is to me never lessens, we spend time together, we sleep together, we fuck, but I feel like I never even scratch the surface. There are nights where I doubt everything and my imagination takes over again, creating storys in the middle of the night but they are never as lively as they used to be. They are filled with sadness and and despair, then I look at the sleeping man next me and refuse to continue my train of thought. I don't know what I feel.

Sadness is what I feel when I find the house empty one day. The door isn't even locked and I wander around the bare rooms like in a dream, the rooms which have been filled with life are cold, nothing is left behind. I sit on the floor where the bed used to be and look out of the window across the lake like I have so many times before. There are a thousand questions, left unanswered and I feel so lost, so lonely, like trying to grasp smoke.

All this time, I hade been holding onto a dream. My feelings had been built on my imagination, on pictures I painted in my mind but my brush dropped into water and the colours dissolved until I couldn't see them anymore. What I had had turned into clear nothingness, my own phantasies had kept me so occupied that I missed reality and now it was gone, carried away by the wind and I wanted nothing but to apologise. All that which had been on my mind had blocked out all the wonderful, real beauty I had right in front of me, warm and alive beneath my hands. The afternoon passed and I stay at my spot until darkness settles over the land.

A weak hope made me go to the post office and there it was, written clumsily on a piece of paper, a forwarding adress.

My hands shake while writing and I want to cry when I read it again

_I missed your real you in favour of what I made of you. My mind painted a picture of you which I was too comfortable with to discard it and it was the biggest mistake I ever made._

_Forgive me._

_I love you._

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I don't feel like I'm done with this but please don't ask where its heading, I have no bloody idea :D

Life in Moles Town loses its appeal to me after everthying that has happened.  
I feel like I'm stagnating, like the world moved on without me and I'm still here, lost, overlooked and forgotten. In late summer I move back to the city where everything is loud, chaotic, constantly too much and I feel like its exactly what I need. Back in a hospital, back in the mess I feel alive like everything is pulsating.

Deep inside me a hole has opened, torn into it by my own stupidity and a love that could never be, a hole that seeks to be filled and the thousand of nameless faces that blurr around me like an aquarell painting make me feel it a little less. The city gives me the distraction I long for to keep me from pondering too much about things I can't change. Most of my thoughts though are focused on myself, on my own feelings and musings and it makes me want to turn away in shame from my own thoughts. 

It was me who destroyed it, the beautiful bubble him and me had, I know it but more often than not I don't feel ready to admit my deeds to myself. Looking back on it it seems to far away, like a faded polaroid pinned on a wall I look at it and sigh at myself the way people sigh at photos of their youth.

Painfully I remind myself that I haven't left Moles Town more than a couple of months ago, that there is no way for me to justify my actions with the foolishness of youth. The realisation stings but then again I ask myself, what can I do? Life goes on and so do I and I catch myself making the same mistake again.

On the bus, in bed at night, whenever my thoughts drift back to the house by the lake I imagine, I feel my grip on the actual memory slip and I begin to tell my own stories again. Its uncomfortable, when realisation sets in, again, that I don't seem to have learned anything. I admonish myself in a feeble attempt to teach a lesson to myself but I fail and I almost enjoy it, this little game I play with myself, trying to trick myself into believing I could make a better person out of myself. I'm a fool, and I know it.

It is almost ironic how fate taught me a lesson by confronting my reveries with reality again to make me hit the bottom in the most exquisite way.  I spot the white wolf dog before I can see its owner, again, and I look like shit, again, standing on the pavement outside the hospital in my scrubs trying to chase the bitter taste of the day with an even more bitter cigarette. The second the crowd of people moves, parts like an ocean to reveal him I freeze, caught in fear like a tsunami was rollling towards me.

There are no words which would allow me to describe the beauty I see, I feel. No sound escapes me and if it wasn't for the dog our paths would have scratched but never crossed again, but its white ears perked up and it looked in my direction, gently pulling on the leash and this short tension suddenly multiplied.

I couldn't manage more than staring, suddenly feeling terribly exposed and raw from emotion and guilt. The meeting was brief but almost more than I could handle, suddenly everything was right in front of me again, all my mistakes laid bare and I recoil. We decide to meet and talk properly, like adults to but it all feels so wrong, its like we're strangers again without the magic evolving between us, it feel clinical.

It belonged into books and films, I was sure of it, but when he asks my forgiveness on the empty pier by the river my heart shatters beneath my ribs. My mind fails to wrap itself around how any of this is not my fault, how there could be things which I have not destroyed. There is a long silence before I dare to speak and I carefully ask why, why I had to find the house empty one day. There is no anger, no accusation in my question just curiosity which had been gnawing on my miind ever since.

I listen carefully but at the same time begin to fight tears, the reason is nothing like I imagined it and it feel like a failure to know so little about him. The tears break free eventually and his sympathy almost overwhelms me, engulfs me and I feel warm and welcome just like I had back at the house. We are like magnets, invisible forces pullinh us towards each other and there us nothing neither of us can do about it.

Different but the same, thats hat it is and, I begin to understand, what we need.

When I find the note I wrote, pinned onto the wall and faded from light with yellowing edged I gently brush the pad of my finger over the stain my tear left on it, like a water mark of whom I had been.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!  
> Leave a comment if you like, I would really appreciate it since this is the first piece I wrote in a different style.


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